Admit it, Dems: Hillary Could Strangle a Puppy on Live TV, and You'd Still Back Her (UPDATED: It's worse than you think)

Democrats don't give a "fart" about legally required government email transparency, as even Democrats now admit.

A quick recap: Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, violated guidelines from the National Archives and her own State Department by using her own private email server for professional correspondence, and then destroying whatever messages she deemed destructible.

At first Clinton claimed that she needed a single non-governmental email account for "convenience," because she only had one phone. That claim turned out to be provably false. Next, she claimed that it didn't matter much, because "The vast majority of my work emails went to government employees at their government addresses, which meant they were captured and preserved immediately on the system at the State Department." The latter half of that claim turned out to be provably false, too. She further insisted that none of the emails contained classified information, a claim that many people with intimate knowledge of such things—such as a former senior State Department official—described with phrases like "hard to imagine." And her assertion in a CNN interview this month that she went "above and beyond" the email disclosure requirements was—wait for it—false.

In sum, the Democratic Party's 2016 presidential frontrunner brazenly violated government transparency policy, made a mockery of the Freedom of Information Act, placed her sensitive communications above the law, and then just lied about it, again and again. Now comes word that, unsurprisingly, two inspectors general are recommending that the Department of Justice open a criminal inquiry into the matter. One of their findings was that the private server, contrary to Clinton's repeated claims, contained "hundreds of potentially classified emails."*

So how much do Democrats value basic transparency, accountability, and honesty in their presidential candidates? Not bloody much, if you go by the handy polls over at RealClearPolitics. The six national polls taken this January and February, before the email scandal first broke, averaged out to a whopping 43 percentage-point lead for Hillary Clinton. How about the next six, in March and April? Plus 50. The 11 polls in May and June, when Berniementum first started sweeping the country, came in at +48, and the most recent five in July stand at +41.

President Barack Obama never paid any political price for pulling a complete 180 on his vows to have the most transparent administration ever, so none of this reaction should be surprising. Still, it's worth stressing that with Hillary Clinton, Democrats have dropped even the pretense of giving a shit about transparency. And if you think that language is unduly harsh, don't take my word for it, take Paul Begala's:

Voters do not give a shit. They do not even give a fart… Find me one persuadable voter who agrees with HRC on the issues but will vote against her because she has a non-archival-compliant email system and I'll kiss your ass in Macy's window and say it smells like roses.

* UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that, contrary to Clinton's statements, not only were some of the emails classified, they were classified at the time they were sent, which would mean yet another defensive explanation (about retroactive classifications) has bitten the dust. Excerpt:

In a letter to members of Congress on Thursday, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community concluded that Mrs. Clinton's email contains material from the intelligence community that should have been considered "secret" at the time it was sent, the second-highest level of classification. A copy of the letter to Congress was provided to The Wall Street Journal by a spokeswoman for the Inspector General.

The four emails in question "were classified when they were sent and are classified now," said Andrea Williams, a spokeswoman for the inspector general. The inspector general reviewed just a small sample totaling about 40 emails in Mrs. Clinton's inbox—meaning that many more in the trove of more than 30,000 may contain potentially secret or top-secret information. […]

"None of the emails we reviewed had classification or dissemination markings, but some included IC-derived classified information and should have been handled as classified, appropriately marked, and transmitted via a secure network," wrote Inspector General I. Charles McCullough in the letter to Congress.

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Oh. Thaats a tough one. Because I’d like to be able to hear his screams as the first baboon enters him. And he won’t be able to scream with his mouth wired shut. Yet I don’t want to expose myself to a rabid Begala.

“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is clearing the way to restart the Export-Import Bank, an expired corporate-welfare agency he has voted against, as part of the highway bill in the Senate this week.”

We’re 16 months from the election. At this point, most voters don’t give a shit about much of anything. Thay’s not to say they never will. I know many people who were deeply disturbed by Hillary Clintons email handling but are just not talking about it because the election is so far away and they havn’t bothered to put much thought into any of the candidates.

Besides the people who vote in primaries are general partisan fanatics so THEY won’t care, but general election voters will.

Investigations take time. Criminal ones that involve cabinet-level officials take even more. Begala and his ilk want this under the rug because they know that if investigations start that they’ll definitely drag into primary season and will possibly drag into the general. And if that happens, even Trump would stand a chance of beating Clinton.

Besides the people who vote in primaries are general partisan fanatics so THEY won’t care, but general election voters will.

You have a far greater opinion of the general voting population that I do.

I think that only Republican partisans and a small percentage of independents (inclusive of libertarians) actually care about this. Far fewer than would have any meaningful electoral impact.

The same would be the case, of course if the parties were reversed. However in that mirror universe the press would have already made this a constant drumbeat story and it just might then have any impact.

if so few people care, why is Hillary having to insist that she is trustworthy? The trust factor is not a media-created thing; it is real because she has been a liar and a grifter all along. It didn’t matter when her husband was president, it mattered enough to Dems in ’08 that they went with a black empty suit, and it matters to enough of the rabble that Bernie Sanders, of all people, has an audience.

Not only insisting that she isn’t a crook, but refusing to appear in any media she hasn’t had curated first-hand by her people, or issue any statement she hasn’t vetted through a bevy of handlers. This woman is telephobic in the extreme. Her campaign knows what a slender thread of plausible deniability her nomination hangs on.

did you miss the non-Wisconsin money that poured in to first defeat, then try to recall, and finally to again defeat Walker? The cable players camped out in Madison for days. Again, this is not an endorsement of the Governor but he’s been through something the others in the field have not, along with the whole he-didn’t-finish-college business. Because all those Ivy Leaguers have done such a great job.

Clinton will prove a turn-off for the ideological purists of the party, not just the kiddos foaming at the mouth for all things Bernie but lefties who are not completely plugged into the Democratic machine. She’s a calculating powerbroker, shiftless and slimy, and even given her v-jay card she won’t inspire the same level of mindless identity politicking that propelled Obama to stardom. She’s placating to the point of condescension and completely unrelatable.

Speaking of, am I the only one on the entire subcontinent who thinks it’s ridiculous that different states have different rules for who can vote for whom in the NATIONAL primaries? Personally, I think that everyone from every party or no party should be able to vote in all presidential primaries. Then I suspect it would be much more readily apparent how bizarre and meaningless our current party based electoral system is. But I think people would take more interest in voting.

I couldn’t register as a Republican or a Democrat and still be able to look myself in the mirror… so I didn’t. So I don’t get to vote on something that, nonetheless, directly affects me. Now this does arguably make some sense – arguably – except when you consider that in another state, someone in my same position may be able to vote in all the primaries, both state and national.

We wonder why no one wants to vote. Not only are we stuck with a giant douche or 17 turd sandwiches, it is made as difficult as possible for us to even get to vote on them. I think it’s so when we successfully vote, we get the false feeling of having accomplished something just because of how freaking unnecessarily fraught the process was.

Don’t you think the parties should be allowed to make their own rules? And that it’s reasonable for someone to have a vote have some kind of membership stake, if the party in that state wants it that way?

I’m just saying that the people on the left and people on the fence will discount the grandstanding by many of the voices in the GOP because they were silent when the president with an R after his name was doing all sorts of shit.

You look at it that way because you’re not a partisan turd that treats pols a certain way based on the letter after their name. Rarely are Dems or GOPers consistent in their outrage.

It’s self-validation, like commitment to Viet-nam. The original reason you took a side doesn’t matter; once you support it, you have a psychologic (& maybe $) investment in it. If you change your mind, that means you did something bad originally, but if you don’t change your mind, that means whatever you did before must’ve been good.

I really feel like we’ll make some progress as a nation one of these days if only we can just come up with enough tired boogeyman tropes for fictitious characterizations of meaningless political designations. Maybe some day!

Well, if a Republican gets elected abortion will be banned, gays will be gunned down in the streets with impunity and slavery will be reinstated. So clearly even the most corrupt and dishonest Democrat is preferable to that.

At this point Shrillary would all but have to devour a live baby to not get elected.

Obama will squash any investigation in to her past misdeeds, not because he cares about her but because he knows that if a Republican wins all of his “legacy” achievements will get destroyed. His legacy stuff was mostly brought about through executive order and can also be reversed by another executive order. He will have one small presidential library to brag about if the GOP wins in 2016.

I’m still not convinced. The D partisans will vote for anyone. But a lot of people really despise her. And she is really old. Add a couple of real scandals and I think she’s in trouble. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. Or would be if it weren’t so awful and depressing.

Which candidates has age hurt? How many Democrat campaigns has age helped and how many Republican campaigns has it hindered? How old on average are Latina democrats?

You kind of sound like my grandmother, lazily coming up with meaningless stereotypes no one has even thought to put together before in lieu of actual conversation. Trying to be pithy over trying to be substantial leads to fewer unsightly brow wrinkles – everybody knows that.

Did the quality of the commenters bring the quality of the writing down here, or was it the other way around? Playing the hackneyed two-party lowest common denominator on a lowest-common-denominator article on a site called “Reason” seems like a little too cheap a joke.

One small presidential library? You are SOOOO wrong. There will be a statue of him on the Washington mall before 2030, and it’s 50/50 whether he winds up on Mt. Rushmore. And these things will not be there because he was a great president or even a decent human being.

And what is Obama’s legacy of greatness, even now, if not a myth? From his empty “Hope and Change” campaign slogans to his reversal on nearly all of his campaign (and pre-campaign) stances and promises, unnoticed by and uninteresting to most of his mindlessly partisan supporters, Obama’s cult of personality is not based in reality. It’s based on his ability to persuasively say nothing to adoring crowds, his “Not Dubya” status, and most of all to a leftist narrative that he’s something he just isn’t because of his skin color. Progressives will never, ever let their narrative go, no matter the facts, because symbolism means more to progressives than concrete reality.

And they will continue to worship him for decades to come. It will become easier over time, too, because they will be met with less reality-based resistance to their story of the Great Light-bringer.

I work with politicians on a regular basis. And these are local and state level.

They all think they are heroes. Just ask them. 🙁

I know how much the commenters here despise cop worship. The worship of politicians is far worse amongst the proletariat. Run for office. Promise your favored tribes a future of favored treatment. Deliver some semblance of same. And, you’ll get your name and likeness enshrined on some public object and go down in history for ever.

Yet most people, dems included, will agree with the general statement that politicians are a bunch of power-hungry crooks, with the exception of the guy or woman they voted for. It’s the same with surveys on education. “Yeah, education sucks, but my kid’s teacher is the lone exception.” Is how the general populace seems to think.

For a libertarian, it’s just a question of realizing that ALL of the politicos and bureaucrats suck — no exceptions. Therefore, it’s important to limit their power as much as possible so the damage to our liberty will be minimized once even the ones who mouth the right words inevitably go off the reservation.

I don’t think it should be that much of a stretch to get people to realize that the one lone personal exemption they always think about doesn’t really exist. You have to keep reminding them of the truth of Lord Acton’s quote: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The rumor mill at HuffPo is that this is all but certain a Bush appointed IG that is deliberately sabotaging Clinton because that’s the only way a GOPer could win the election.

Seriously. They don’t think for a second that this is a legit breach and even when confronted with the “if a Republican SoS did this…” They just say that “the GOP will never be in that position to be corrupt again” and “greater good” bullshit.

In MPA programs, the classes on ethics teach us that certain laws and regulations were put into place to stop political patronage.

And yet, here we still are.

One can be a compete loser and do quite well by riding some pol’s coattails into office and ending up being appointed to some administrative position even though you have no education, experience or applicable knowledge that would qualify you. It really helps if you have female genitalia and are darkly complected. Speak with an accent on top of those two qualifiers and you’re golden.

“Find me one persuadable voter who agrees with HRC on the issues but will vote against her because she has a non-archival-compliant email system and I’ll kiss your ass in Macy’s window and say it smells like roses.”

Well, given that HRC *has no position on any issues*, this is a rather difficult thing to narrow down.

Given the # of people who seem to be Bucking for Bernie, i’d think there’s actually a substantial # of Dems who aren’t exactly enthused by her low-interest in little things like “ethics” or “rules”.

“”The polling showed that nearly half of Democratic respondents – 46 percent – agreed there should be an independent review of all of Clinton’s emails to ensure she turned over everything that is work-related.””

Does Begala really think zero out of that 46% *actually* give a shit, despite the poll?

I’m not sure it matters, because I already know my ass smells like butterscotch.

I don’t know the actual poll because I caught this on the radio, but it seems possible that a great deal of Sanders’ support is coming from Baby Boom generation, upper-middle class, white progressives i.e. it could help him in IA & NH. However, it does not seem that he is exciting other parts of the Dems coalition.

Not sure how or if that helps Hillary but, “First Woman President” may come into play.

I thought it strange back when the last review of the pipeline came out every division of government was against it except state. The the book came out about the 2,5 million that was donated to the foundation from pro pipeline interests and it all made sense.

To me the multiple bribes, even back to the cattle futures deal, more than the email issue should have the woman in prison rather than in a run for the Presidency, IMHO.

I think he spends too much time with the super partisans. The actual “swing vote” is made up of largely of people who don’t pay attention to real issues at all and vote based on campaign ads and personal feelings. And stuff like the email thing could hurt her with those people if someone presents it in the right way closer to the election.

“Health care reform advocates inched closer to victory Wednesday as a high-profile liberal Democrat switched his position and announced his intention to vote for a sweeping $875 billion plan under consideration in the House of Representatives.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, said he believes “health care is a civil right.” He had previously characterized the bill, which cleared the Senate in December, as little more than a boondoggle for private insurers.”

Kucinich was thoroughly against the ACA and had taken a rather principled stand…. Then one day President Obama had him come aboard Air Force One and they had a very long chat. Suddenly Representative Kucinich, whose vote if I recall correctly was necessary at that point to get the ACA passed, decided to vote for it after all.

He was rewarded later by having his district “gerrymandered out from under him” so that he couldn’t be reelected.

The general thought was that because he had held out for so long and wasn’t being a sufficiently obedient team player the Democrats punished him. If you’d like, Gil, I’ll try to find links to some of the articles I read at the time.

“He was rewarded later by having his district “gerrymandered out from under him” so that he couldn’t be reelected…..The general thought was that because he had held out for so long and wasn’t being a sufficiently obedient team player the Democrats punished him.”

Classy!

A quick glance across the Googlesphere seems to blame Republicans for his demise, however

Its not clear. because the 2010 census would have pre-dated the GOP election, and it was the census that cost the state at least 1 representative seat.

Chuck Klosterman had a pretty great quote in I Wear the Black Hat: “If honesty drove the electoral process… the 2008 presidential race would have been a dead heat between Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.”

I mean, Kucinich is honest in his belief that he was abducted by aliens from Shirley MacLaine’s house that one time.

Progressives have a long and complicated history with naively supporting regimes which actually do the things they claim nefarious Republicans want to do. So it’s nothing new. Acting like an outright criminal in her professional affairs, however, is notable.

The great thing about the Hillary with a Blackberry pic is that I’m pretty sure it was taken while Benghazi was unfolding.

And, oddly, not a single email was produced by Hillary during that period. So here’s a photo of her working a smartphone during the biggest crisis of her tenure, and apparently she was busy sending personal email.

That, and the many lies that Welch lists, will make an excellent TV or web ad a year from now. And if the GOP doesn’t do it, some independent group will, Thank God for Citizens United.

Begala is putting up a brave face, and saying what he’s paid to say, but he’s sweating and he knows it. Some Democrats do care about lies like this, and many, many independents do. Lots of people were eager to vote for the Chocolate Jesus, but far fewer are enthusiastic about a Female Nixon.

The most telling thing to me about Hillary and Benghazi was the “WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE” schpiel she put on during the congressional hearings.

The whole point of the investigations was to determine exactly what difference could have been made, and she clearly didn’t want anyone to know just how culpable and negligent she was during the entire episode.

The fact that she told the families of those killed in Benghazi that “we will get those SOB’s that made that video” while they were taking the caskets off the plane should be enough to disqualify her for dogcatcher, never mind POTUS.

One suspects that a private group has a campaign ad ready to go. It will feature pics of the burning embassy, the coffins, and Stephens’ body being dragged through the streets with HRC’s “What difference…” quote being played over it repeatedly.

“What difference, at this point, does it make” is true as far as that goes. You can’t go back in time and do it over again. But we still try people for crimes that have already happened. No murderer gets off by saying “what difference does it make at this point whether or not I killed this person?” even though punishing the murderer won’t unkill the victim.

This is why electing Hillary would be such a disaster for the country and one orders of magnitude greater than electing even the worst Republican. I don’t care if a Republican pursued the exact same policies Hillary would or even worse policies, it would still be better than a Hillary administration because no Republican is going to get away with the raw criminality a Hillary administration would.

Here is how Washington works. There are four power players in Washington; the President, the President’s party in Congress, the opposition party in congress and the national media. The President can only be held accountable or stopped if two of the other three power players turn against him. It doesn’t matter if the opposite party controls Congress, as long as the President’s own party and the media stand behind him, the President will never be held accountable.

As this article shows, neither the media nor the Democrats will ever hold Hillary responsible for anything, no matter how brazen and criminal. In contrast, the Democrats, the media and any number of Republicans will happily hold a Republican President accountable.

Regardless of what you think of the candidates, electing a Democrat President is giving that person carte blanche to do anything they want while in office. Giving a person like Hillary that power is total insanity.

You must be reading a different Reason. I see a lot of articles that are overly optimistic about certain republicans and very few that have anything good to say about liberals. Almost everyone means well.

It would infuriate a good portion of the current commentariat, but I could honestly see the value to “libertarianism” (or the strand of libertarianism that could possibly appeal to our Democratic elites) that the site have a commenting class of the Shrikes and Bo’s of the world.

(The actual Shrike being a bit of an ass and the actual Bo being quite possibly a high functioning autistic kid )

Regardless of what you think of the candidates, electing a Democrat President is giving that person carte blanche to do anything they want while in office. Giving a person like Hillary that power is total insanity.

Giving anyone that power would be insanity. Giving it to a shrill, conniving, morally bankrupt harridan like her would be insanity of a level heretofore completely unknown to history.

I generally agree. Except for Paul, none of the republicans do anything for me. But another Democrat being elected (especially if it is Hillary) would be very bad. A Republican may well be very bad too, but at least the media, etc. would give them some scrutiny and criticism.

What I really think we need is a long string of one term presidents. It is just ridiculous that so many presidents get reelected.

We need to have a Republican President at the very least to ensure the Supreme Court doesn’t’ flip on Citizens United and Gun control and to have four years where the executive branch is acting with total immunity.

Yeah. I can’t imagine Ginsburg won’t retire in time for Obama to choose a replacement. And Scalia and Thomas are getting pretty old. Would be nice to see Scalia replaced with someone who will hold the line on gun control and free speech, but perhaps be a bit better on 4th amendment and other criminal justice stuff.

Too late. She won’t retire until 2016 and the Senate won’t confirm any successor in an election year. So the Ginsburg seat will be filled by the next President along with likely the Kennedy seat and maybe the Scalia or Thomas seat depending on their health. If Hillary wins, you could see the court flip full on Prog.

Nor do I (obviously). I think that the best that can be hoped for is lots of turnover and no single party control of congress and the presidency. I don’t expect to see any third party presidents any time soon.

You may not have confidence that a GOP president will appoint good justices, because it only happens some of the time. But you can be confident that a Democrat will appoint bad ones, because that’s happened 100% of the time, for generations.

You may not have confidence that a GOP president will appoint good justices, because it only happens some of the time. But you can be confident that a Democrat will appoint bad ones, because that’s happened 100% of the time, for generations.

It doesn’t matter. A Republican won’t be a dictator above any kind of accountability. Do you like full on abuse of power and theft and criminality? if you do, vote Hillary because that is what you will get. You are electing someone who will never be held accountable for anything. She won’t even bother dealing with Congress because there will be no need.

I’ll probably vote for Gary’s Johnson again. Being that a lesser of two evils is still evil, I can’t see myself supporting either. I did it once and felt dirty afterwards. I just can’t bring myself to do it again.

Do what you want. But understand that if Hillary wins, she will have pretty much absolute power. And no Republican will have that kind of power and the ability to ignore the law the way she will. I think that is something we might want to stop even if it means voting for a Republican.

Seriously, is there any Democrat that is bad enough to make you think voting for some vanilla do nothing Republican is worth doing to stop them?

First you’d need to convince that there is any chance of my vote making the difference. As far as I can tell, my vote is worth about as much as my hopes and wishes. At this point, I just consider myself an observer and not a participant in any way in politics.

Maybe we should go back to the classics. Shillary currently resembles Tiberius by hiding from the media like Tiberius hid from Rome on Capri while ordering hits by others on perceived enemies . But I feel she has the true potential, for the reasons John outlines, to blossom into a Domitian or Commodus. Or dare shall I hope for her to achieve with the help of the media, the Dems and her v-jay her true potential as a Caracella? After all, during the imperial era the Romans never abolished the Senate- the Ceasar just regarded it like Obama regards the Congress.

Damn you John! I will have to break out my cookbook of Roman era dishes. Tonight I’ll eat too much and drink too much wine while I contemplate my fate. That is to be led out to the local Tarpeian Rock by my local Dems for conspiring against Barry and Hillary.

We need to do away with primaries completely and let all 27 candidates cram into the clown car and fight each other head to head – or something needs to give. Pretending that the Democrats and Republicans are the only game in town, and all the attendant inflation of importance that the primary ceremony bestows on them, is very bad. Nothing will change so long as a Democrat or a Republican is in office. It is a well oiled machine.

They could stop the federal financing of their nat’l conventions. The states could take party names off the ballot & voter registr’n forms, & stop running their primaries. Even privatized like that, I’m sure NY & NJ would continue to have strong party systems at the state level, but I think a lot of states would shortly have very weak ones.

The top-2 primary-&-runoff systems Calif. & Wash. now have would be a benefit to small parties if they can just get above the tiny class.

That is just it, the deadlock wouldn’t matter. She would just continue and expand what Obama has done and ignore the law and act more and more like a dictator. As long as the Democrats and the media stand behind her, there is nothing anyone could do to stop her.

The Progs have I think given up on taking back Congress anytime soon. But they think they have a lock on the White House. So their solution is to just make the President an elected dictator and read Congress out of the mix. And they will get away with it as long as they keep winning the White House. The only option Congress has is to either shut down the government, which wont’ work since the media will ensure the public blames them, or impeach, which they can’t do without the Democrats supporting (which won’t happen).

Obama has ended the days of thinking a Democratic President gridlocked by a Republican Congress is the answer. It is not anymore.

Yes. Because a Republican President will have to answer to the media and his own party. If a Republican President tried half the shit Obama has done, he would be run out of office. The media will suddenly discover the majesty of Congress and the need to do something about the Imperial Presidency.

A Republican will be lucky if he is able to undo some of the actions of Obama. He can forget expanding it. That is not how it works.

That is not going to save the country. It is going to turn the country into a third rate dictatorship with a debating society for a Congress. Meanwhile, Hillary and her prog successors will be using the FBI, IRS and the full power of the federal government to harass and in some cases jail her opponents.

That is what you don’t get, Hillary will never go down, no matter how much crminality she engages in. If you want another Nixon, elect a Republican because no Democrat is ever going to be held accountable for any abuse of power.

The “legacy” media are of course declining in readership and viewership (even as the percentage of democratic leaning reporters is ever higher. Surely it is roughly 90/10)

But “new” media outlets are even more strongly Democratically aligned. This apparent bias in contrast to the “old” media might actually be simply that the Democratic reporters have no need to obscure their outlook online.

Perhaps I am wrong, but do y’all see any flowering of non-progressive voices, free from the legacy media?

Granted, if Twitter can be classified as a media outlet, there are partisans of all stripes represented. But twitter still has little influence on policy.

“Voters do not give a shit. They do not even give a fart? Find me one persuadable voter who agrees with HRC on the issues but will vote against her because she has a non-archival-compliant email system and I’ll kiss your ass in Macy’s window and say it smells like roses.”

He’s absolutely right, though the qualifier “who agrees with HRC on the issues” is unnecessary. I have had numerous conversations with Dems about Hillary, and their eyes glaze over when I bring up the e-mail thing, Benghazi, taking foreign money while SoS, etc. They do not care at all. Hillary is a woman and a Dem. Case closed.

It is because voting Democrat is their entire identity. IF they admitted Hillary was scum and held her accountable by not voting or voting Green or gasp voting Democrat, what would they have? How could they wake up in the morning feeling they are on the right side and are better than other people?

Because everyone, except the self centered pols in DC, would ignore him. He’d make the POTUS an irrelevant matter in our lives. He’d end up being something carried in the media rags like Oprah and Kardashian stories.

And maybe finally, we as a nation, would stop viewing the POTUS as a benevolent dictator which might allow us to give serious thought to the whole issue of government in our lives. Libertarians might actually make some headway.

In the meantime, nothing relevant would come out of Washington because all of the pols and talking heads would be busy cleaning up Trump’s crap. Like something out of a Keystone Cops short.

There is one question I would love to hear asked of Ms. Clinton in a Presidential debate (or other inescapable public forum):

“Based on your legal expertise as a member of the House Judiciary’s Impeachment Inquiry staff, and the arguments which led to legal action being proposed against President Nixon, how many email messages would it take to equal 17 minutes of audio tape?”

This is why I am an Anarchist. Never in the history of man can you show me one form of government that was not corrupt. It seems man has to basic needs. One is a god to blame rather than themselves and the other is to have someone to lead them around by the nose. Everyone knows what Hillary is. All those poor little Democrats shouldn’t be to shocked when they find out how far her head is stuck up Wall Street ass and that she is more of war mongering neocon than John McCain

Government is corrupt because groups of people are corrupt, because people are conniving. How does one attain anarchy without any group of people holding power over another? Or by anarchist do you just mean anti-establishment?

Regardless of what you think of the candidates, electing a Democrat President is giving that person carte blanche to do anything they want while in office. . Yeah. “Regardless of what you think of the candidates, electing a Democrat REPUBLICAN President is giving that person carte blanche to do anything they want while in office.” . And that’s how you get your TEAM voter to hold his/her/its nose and vote for whatever TEAM excrescence appears on the ballot.

Apparently they were just better at getting away with it, which might explain why John is so incredulous. In fact, I’d kind of like to hear John’s impression of what “it” is that Obama got away with – not because i can’t look up his political actions myself, but because I’m honestly curious what sins take precedence in the mind of someone who can deadpan something like that.

A specific reason that only applies to democrats was given for that statement. The media overwhelmingly identifies as democrat. This gives a distinct advantage to democrat politicians in what they can do without being criticized in the majority of the media. Many argument can just have parties switched and applied to both. For example, “Republican/Democrat loyalist won’t care if their party leader breaks the law”. The sentence you chose, though, is not one of them.

“The media” is a comfortably vague entity to say anything we like about. Plenty of people also genuinely say that the media is overwhelmingly right-wing. When you say “the media,” which specific news sites, publications or organizations do you have in mind?

The media as a whole self-identifies as democrat at numbers close to 80%. Even organizations like Fox News have staff that are majority democrat. I’m sorry, but this isn’t something that can be equally applied to both parties.

Stop whining. There are just as many GOPers out there who will always vote GOP as there are Dems doing the opposite. In fact , it’s worse. They’ll vote for Trump if he is the nominee. In fact plenty voted to put Palin a heartbeat away from the Oval Office. And that includes the phony libertarians who frequent these pages. Stop yer whinin’.

Fuck off Joe. Yeah, we get it, you are a brain dead idiot who doesn’t care how bad Hillary is or what she does. We knew that. You don’t have to show us by posting a bunch bullshit about how the other side. Even if they are just as bad, that doesn’t make you any less of a moron. You don’t have to prove it. Go back into your hole.

I didn’t write an article complaining about one way voters, did I? In fact, I wouldn’t, because I know that’s just politics today. Just pointing out that Matt is whining. And he is. Dems can easily make the case that if politics has become a zero-sum game, the GOP owns it, with their unprecedented use of the filibuster, government shutdown threats, and blocking nominations.

Ill put it this way, sg. If Matt was interested in laying into the zero- sum game politics has become, he would have written an article blasting the base of both parties.

You can type “Welch Republican” and “Welch Trump” in the reason.com search bar up there, and find articles of Matt’s where he’s speaking critically of them, too.

See, some of us can handle multiple articles, each addressing a single topic. I’m sorry if your sense of fairness requires all articles critical of democrats to also include a republican-bashing section, without which you’ll start whining and crying about the big picture and fairness, boo hoo. But, frankly, most of us really don’t care, and can handle it.

Really, reason.com writers are pretty good at being fair with their criticism and openly admitting to having opinions, simultaneously. See search bar above.

And, if consistency and fairness are your concern, note that all their republican bashing articles don’t always contain a fairnes- doctrine-democrat-bashing section. Horrors.

Most likely the GOP Veep candidate position will be sold after the field gets whittled down below 6. In fact, the eventual GOP Veep will probably be the one who decides who the presidential candidate is…

I can’t even muster one single iota of curiosity. With sports brackets there’s a lot of fun guessing who will win and who will be matched up based on the relative merits of the various teams and players. Even if you don’t follow it you can at least understand why people who do find it worthwhile.

This isn’t sports. Apathy is what comes of a system with no outward logic, for which there can be no pattern recognition or anticipation. They’ll probably just pull some loser out of the closet on both sides.

He got a lot passed. The Iraq war, NCLB, the Patriot Act. And when he so much as thought about exceeding his authority the media hammered him. And oh by the way, when he left office, the Republican party was totally out of power. Put Hillary in and the price the Democrats will have paid for Obama is a few hill rats losing their jobs.

If even a quarter of the Democrats in Congress turned on Obama, he would be done and likely impeached. If that doesn’t happen, and it never will, then there is nothing anyone can do to stop him. He can do whatever he likes. And Hillary will have that same impunity.

Did Bush ever use the IRS and FBI to go after his opponents? Did Bush ever just decide not to enforce immigration law and start giving out green cards? Did Bush go and negotiate treaties with hostile countries and tell Congress to fuck off? Did he ever go to war without approval from Congress?

No. But Obama did all of that and is going to do even more over the next year and a half. And Hillary will just build on it. A Republican won’t be able to do that.

Funny, the lesson I came away with was “you’re saying that only these guys kill children like it’s meaningful and productive. Wrong. Everybody kills children and everybody sucks and there is no solution.”

“I have trouble seeing this as any more than an administrative fuck up that really doesn’t affect my life whatsoever”

But what if she deleted an email that proved she WASN’T BORN IN THE COUNTRY. Or one that proved that vaccines are going to kill us all. Or one that would unravel the mystery of chemtrails forever.

Sorry, what I meant to say is that people just slobber all over POSSIBILITY, and never the actual scope of the wrongdoing.

If we looked closely enough, no one would pass muster, and we know that. Look at Congress. Everyone hates every single person in Congress but we know there’s nothing we can do about it. We just wait for one of them to be charged with something so we can say I KNEW IT, because that’s all we have.

Are you familiar with some of the vigilante justice that was meted out by San Francisco citizens more than 100 years ago when they became fed up with the political corruption? Many of the involved pols simply left town rather than face the angry mobs.

I’ve seen similar results in my work life today.

I work in local government. Our board consists of elected officials. They aren’t afraid to feed at the trough and, they are known to say there is nothing wrong with what they are doing.

But, one whiff of the press showing interest in what they are doing, has them cancelling vacations claimed to be “conference attendance” and parties claimed to be “agency business”. They start walking the straight and narrow for a while.

Sadly this only lasts for a short period of time until they think that no one is watching. And then, they fall back to their old ways.

So, you can imagine that leak information to the press pretty regularly. But sadly, the press frequently bungles it. Badly.

Pretty soon, I’m just going to start contacting these pols directly and pretend to be the press. After all, they pretend to be on our board to look out for the public’s interests. If I go direct myself, it won’t get fubared by an incompetent reporter.

You might want to quit lying. From your link: “Hillary Clinton Sent Classified Information Over Email While at State Department, Review Finds Information was classified as ‘secret’ at the time it was sent, intelligence community inspector general says” I don’t give a crap whether you’d vote for her or not, but defending that slimy hag with lies is a bit off the charts.

What they fail to mention is that every channel that isn’t Fox News would choose not to air that broadcast, and Fox News would sensationalize the hell out of it plus induce the knee-jerk, “Fox News is so biased!” cat calls and requisite looking down their noses at the people referencing it.

Basically, even if Hillary strangled a puppy on Live TV, not a single Dem would see it or believe it.

C’mon, y’all, this is all old hat? A member of “team blue” can do no wrong in the eyes of “team blue”, and ditto for “team red”… Fred Nietzsche told as all way back when, the morally superior Uber-Menschen can do as they will, w/o limit; rules be damned. Hillary is a member of the morally superior Uber-Wenchen, so She can Wench at will, as well!

Anyway, thanks for bringing up a good point in the most ridiculous way possible. The people on Team [X] are going to rag all over Team [X’] (nope, not even X and Y, because they’re not actually different) and insist that They’re Different from that Other Team, and the Other Team’s over there saying the same thing and doing the same thing.

Ignoring that an increasingly large chunk of people aren’t even on a freaking team in the first place because pretending you’re standing in the middle ground of morals and reason while you’re actually howling in the weeds right next to the people you think you’re howling about is dumb.

And ignoring that while you’re doing that, the “feuding parties” that are tossing power back and forth like a hackey sack and giving each other champagne spongebaths while you’re not looking.

This was the rage out of Oakland CA schools only a few years back when the middle and HS students decided they weren’t going to waste their time reading such material and refused to do so. There are even rap songs about it.

And, the got a lot of support from the school board and local pols for their demands.

Of course, the fact that these ignoramuses couldn’t read in the first place and the school board jumping on the bandwagon to avoid acceptance of their school’s role in their illitercacy might have had something to do with it.

Too bad this didn’t happen years before when I was at UC. Then I might have refused to read the race based rape encouraging “Soul on Ice” by Eldridge Cleaver on similar grounds and gotten away with it. But at the time, I wouldn’t have been PC and the dean would have shut me down without incident.

That is literally the same thing people who identify as left-wing say about the people they presume to be the Right.

No, it’s not worse when they do it. No, they’re not just lying, they believe it just as much as you do. It’s the same. You’re saying the exact same thing.

They both do the exact same thing. And you’re saying this like it’s productive. We’ve seriously got vast swaths of people who earnestly believe there are only two camps and the other party (which in their imagination contains many more people than it actually does) is a monolithic group of simultaneously lying and conniving, stupid and incompetent, evil people who are clearly not as worthy as they are of the privileges of citizenship or of the most basic human rights. Most of the voting public believes that at least half of the voting public are inferior to themselves, and that their perspective is universally right, accepted and understood.

But no, as long as one is slightly worse than the other, then that’s all we need to worry about. Congratulations. You’re who this whole show is for. It’s working.

The SoCons that everyone likes to clutch pearls over are literally dying out. You get Socially Liberal by default. Where’s the progress economically? Democrats gave us socialism. Bernie Sanders is a mainstream candidate. Sure, Trump is polling well right now and a klepto-buffoon, but nothing really compares to that.

I say virtually the same thing about the national obsession, supported by the conversation here, with the POTUS as though that is the most important political position in the entire nation and all political power flows from it.

The NY Times put out a misleading article, saying that the referral was criminal, and that it targeted Hillary. Neither of these were true. It is quite the strategy they have, being in the tank for her and putting out false information that she was targeted criminally! How could they put out such positive misinformation?

So people are tribalistic and reflexively support members and representatives of their tribe. Huh.

The bad news for HRC is that voters are disengaged and know virtually nothing about politics. Joe Q. Public’s tribe is a lot fuzzier than DEMOCRAT and REPUBLICAN, which is how candidates like Reagan, Clinton, and Obama can achieve so much popular success by bringing out not only the yellow-dog base, but also unconventional corners of the electorate who are notoriously difficult to mobilize.

Who cares about voters? Money talks, and money has already selected its two top candidates at this point in the process. One red, and one blue. We’re not going to get anything different, and you can tell that because Joe Q. Public probably doesn’t even have a clear vision of what ‘different’ could look like at this point.

HRC could strangle a puppy on live TV and — if she’s the Dem nominee — I’d back her against any Republican. Because for every puppy HRC strangles, any Republican will do his or her level best throw 100 destitute cancer patients off of Medicare.

Voters also see through the scandal mongering. Going back to Bill’s administration, people have been trying to drudge up any kind of scandal on the thinnest of threads. The problem is, so many of the scandals are bogus, nobody believes them when some are possibly legit. Also, when their opponents reach for the smelling salts over some action that your average Joe will look at and shrug their shoulders, any impact is lost.

Republicans can only blame themselves, it is a direct result of Clinton Derangement Syndrome. I didn’t work in the 90’s, and it’s still not working.

After all, you both supported for-profit prisons and have been taking a great deal of money from them. Reason has produced bogus research to support them, and Hillary’s husband passed the “for-profit prison millionaire executive retirement act,” also known as “Truth in Sentencing.”

Commonality. Perhaps. But, something more like detante than common cause.

Besides, while Reason my support for-profit prisons. That’s only the lack of administrative efficiency their addressing. They also want to have a hell of a lot less inmates in those prisons. Combine the two and you have one heck of a business plan.

All that Hillary and her ilk, having no use for business in the first place, is take from those who have and throw it to those who do not. All the while sucking their steep commission off the top for being so benevolent.

begala wasn’t exactly helpful, but his honesty is appreciated nonetheless. there’s this great scene on ’24’ -the 1st episode ever i think- where jack explains to nina about how all those colleagues he helped bring down weren’t bad people as much as they just acquired a taste for doing the wrong thing. anyway, i bring it up because he said that when you do one thing wrong, you develop a taste for it, and that keeps the ball rolling, so you can’t even mess up once. ironically, jack goes on to torture everyone as a form of greeting in future episodes, but that’s neither here nor there.

this doesn’t apply to hillary. she’s a lost cause. it does apply to the voters who “don’t care” though, because you can’t exactly complain about the next thing too much when you were instrumental in getting the candidate drunk in the first place.

Go man go, Republican messengers declare they would represent all citizens, why? The Democratic messenger represent a constituency whose activities are real. A constituency who’s past, present, and future is real. A constituency who participate or who are willing to learn to participate with others. The Democratic messenger will be the president of the United States of America. Have a respect for all citizens.

Go man go, Republican messengers declare they would represent all citizens, why? The Democratic messenger represent a constituency whose activities are real. A constituency who’s past, present, and future is real. A constituency who participate or who are willing to learn to participate with others. The Democratic messenger will be the president of the United States of America. Have a respect for all citizens.

Go man go, Republican messengers declare they would represent all citizens, why? The Democratic messenger represent a constituency whose activities are real. A constituency who’s past, present, and future is real. A constituency who participate or who are willing to learn to participate with others. The Democratic messenger will be the president of the United States of America. Have a respect for all citizens.

Go man go, Republican messengers declare they would represent all citizens, why? The Democratic messenger represent a constituency whose activities are real. A constituency who’s past, present, and future is real. A constituency who participate or who are willing to learn to participate with others. The Democratic messenger will be the president of the United States of America. Have a respect for all citizens.

Go man go, Republican messengers declare they would represent all citizens, why? The Democratic messenger represent a constituency whose activities are real. A constituency who’s past, present, and future is real. A constituency who participate or who are willing to learn to participate with others. The Democratic messenger will be the president of the United States of America. Have a respect for all citizens.

Go man go, Republican messengers declare they would represent all citizens, why? The Democratic messenger represent a constituency whose activities are real. A constituency who’s past, present, and future is real. A constituency who participate or who are willing to learn to participate with others. The Democratic messenger will be the president of the United States of America. Have a respect for all citizens.

Go man go, Republican messengers declare they would represent all citizens, why? The Democratic messenger represent a constituency whose activities are real. A constituency who’s past, present, and future is real. A constituency who participate or who are willing to learn to participate with others. The Democratic messenger will be the president of the United States of America. Have a respect for all citizens.

Go man go, Republican messengers declare they would represent all citizens, why? The Democratic messenger represent a constituency whose activities are real. A constituency who’s past, present, and future is real. A constituency who participate or who are willing to learn to participate with others. The Democratic messenger will be the president of the United States of America. Have a respect for all citizens.

Go man go, Republican messengers declare they would represent all citizens, why? The Democratic messenger represent a constituency whose activities are real. A constituency who’s past, present, and future is real. A constituency who participate or who are willing to learn to participate with others. The Democratic messenger will be the president of the United States of America. Have a respect for all citizens.

Go man go, Republican messengers declare they would represent all citizens, why? The Democratic messenger represent a constituency whose activities are real. A constituency who’s past, present, and future is real. A constituency who participate or who are willing to learn to participate with others. The Democratic messenger will be the president of the United States of America. Have a respect for all citizens.

Go man go, Republican messengers declare they would represent all citizens, why? The Democratic messenger represent a constituency whose activities are real. A constituency who’s past, present, and future is real. A constituency who participate or who are willing to learn to participate with others. The Democratic messenger will be the president of the United States of America. Have a respect for all citizens.

Go man go, Republican messengers declare they would represent all citizens, why? The Democratic messenger represent a constituency whose activities are real. A constituency who’s past, present, and future is real. A constituency who participate or who are willing to learn to participate with others. The Democratic messenger will be the president of the United States of America. Have a respect for all citizens.

Go man go, Republican messengers declare they would represent all citizens, why? The Democratic messenger represent a constituency whose activities are real. A constituency who’s past, present, and future is real. A constituency who participate or who are willing to learn to participate with others. The Democratic messenger will be the president of the United States of America. Have a respect for all citizens.

Go man go, Republican messengers declare they would represent all citizens, why? The Democratic messenger represent a constituency whose activities are real. A constituency who’s past, present, and future is real. A constituency who participate or who are willing to learn to participate with others. The Democratic messenger will be the president of the United States of America. Have a respect for all citizens.

Go man go, Republican messengers declare they would represent all citizens, why? The Democratic messenger represent a constituency whose activities are real. A constituency who’s past, present, and future is real. A constituency who participate or who are willing to learn to participate with others. The Democratic messenger will be the president of the United States of America. Have a respect for all citizens.

Go man go, Republican messengers declare they would represent all citizens, why? The Democratic messenger represent a constituency whose activities are real. A constituency who’s past, present, and future is real. A constituency who participate or who are willing to learn to participate with others. The Democratic messenger will be the president of the United States of America. Have a respect for all citizens.

Go man go, Republican messengers declare they would represent all citizens, why? The Democratic messenger represent a constituency whose activities are real. A constituency who’s past, present, and future is real. A constituency who participate or who are willing to learn to participate with others. The Democratic messenger will be the president of the United States of America. Have a respect for all citizens.

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Democrats support all forms of nullification of laws–as long as the nullifiers are Democrats. This is because Dems are always in the right and their agenda is for the good of the country.

But let some preacher proclaim he won’t marry gays because of his religious beliefs, then they go all out to hound him into recanting or even into jail, presumably under the theory that his service is a public accommodation.

I don’t guess there is much that the majority can do in the face of such hypocrisy when it is supported by the major media outlets on TV and the newspaper that still claims it prints all the news that’s fit to print (as long as it fits their editorial agenda).

Democrats will allow any misdeeds for Hillary indefinitely, right up until the point that it looks like she wouldn’t win the general election. Exactly at that moment will they rediscover caring about the character of the person running.

If she makes it past the nomination, they will never turn on her.

As others above have already pointed out, many people think voting for Republicans is identical for voting for Nazis.

Well, historically, Christian conservatives were quite closely linked to the Nazis in Europe. The NSDAP didn’t have the absolute majority in Germany; it was the Catholic Center Party that joined in with the Nazis in parliament to give Hitler his powers.

And if you listen to the current Pope, his economic and social message is not “Marxist”, it is essentially fascist. Where he differs from fascism is that the church has primacy over the state (it’s the other way around in fascism), and that you have the option of joining the Master Religion instead of having to have been born into the Master Race.

But would strangling the puppy further the achievement of the goals of prog-fascism? …Hold it, what am I thinking. It wouldn’t matter how bad anything Hillary does hurts her zombie supporters, they’d still support her.

Only barely an exaggeration. The levels of criminality already alleged either of Hillary or Bill ought to be sufficient to support such a statement. After all, mere “celebrities” like Bill Cosby, no longer get invited to tony parties once it’s been socially determined that they raped. But Bill? Oh. . .he’s as welcome as can be at any of the most exclusive gatherings. By now, the moral tergiversation among the left should be a familiar thing.

Who cares? The dems don’t care about ancient history. They DO care that she is a war hawk who takes her money from wall street. She is unelectable. Too republican for dems, too democratic for republicans.

Government is a shit show. In our modern version of the shit show Presidents put into power those of the same party who formerly ran for President. Our Congress, Senate, Supreme Court, and Alphabet Agencies, are not exempt from the shit show that is Government.

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Clinton’s emails being “classified” isn’t the point. “Need to know” is the point (also, government & military doctrine). You don’t talk to a person even with SECRET security clearance about “normal” topics that do not fall into his/her areas of operation. I learned that the ugly way once in my US Army days. Government and military officials, therefore, should never make any of their business vulnerable to hacking.